Imperfection
by Aiko Isari
Summary: 02/Savers. He thinks of her and wonders if maybe things would have been different if they had just tried a little harder.
1. 1

1.

Kurata Akihiro is a lonely boy.

He likes his little chemistry set, fake though it is, and likes trying to fix anthills and count the ants as they go in and out. He likes building his sandcastles like they are symmetrical and make sense and tries his hardest not to cry when some jerk knocks them down. He likes the cat that takes food from his hand and doesn't even nip.

He does not like people very much. To be fair, they don't like him, not with his big round glasses and the tattered library card.

It's a mutual exhaustible dislike.

* * *

 _Kurata thinks of this time and considers it ignorance. He almost wishes he could go back._

* * *

He studies, long and often. He has some of the highest grades in math and science, and mediocre ones in gym. (The best from that is in running, which doesn't say much.) His one human friend has strangely red hair that makes him think of strawberries, and she smiles more at him than she does anyone else. He honestly can't remember when they became friends, but she's so interested in everything that he does (almost to an absurd degree) that he can't really care.

For reasons he doesn't understand, seeing her with others makes him feel ill. Like they shouldn't be near her, like they will hurt her. His mother would call it a protective instinct whenever he complained about it. He doesn't believe her. His family has had a history of horrible digestive issues after all. She's told him so herself. But Akihiro has no way of testing it, none that he can think of. After all, she doesn't seem to mind him talking to other people herself.

The nausea fades whenever she looks at him, and he has an instinctive feeling that she knows why it's there. Akihiro doesn't like his instincts. Following them leads to face punches and trashed glass chemistry kits that he can barely afford to put back together.

They prove him wrong just once. Just once when she punches a boy hard in the face, hard enough to send him tumbling. Hard enough for him to see the most blood he'd ever seen leave a human body in one hit.

(He later learns that he's seen nothing and that he's much too young to understand but at the time he was naturally full of horror.)

When the bullies run, she turns to him and fixes his glasses and hugs him, soft and gentle. He pushes her away without thinking and runs away himself. He flees from her sight because a girl shouldn't be able to do that without remorse or disgust and then look at you like you matter more than anything. A human shouldn't be able to.

It's like blaming yourself. It's like it's Akihiro's fault she broke the boy's nose and almost his brain.

It's not. It's not.

* * *

 _ **A/N:**_ Why are these prompts always so stubborn? It's always for these ones I swear. Anyway, here's my little look into a possible what-if. Keeping it mostly canon, so, well, I'm sure we can guess what happens here. Anyway, please drop a review below if you feel so inclined!

Challenges: What-if, Digimon Non Flash Bingo 628: Akihiro Kurata, Diversity Writing Challenge: G28. Write a fic that explores love, and Halloween Trick or Treat Bag day 10. Write a relationship that ends in tragedy.


	2. 2

_2._

He tries to avoid her as much as possible. The bullies do too, but they seem too afraid to call her out in public. No wonder. How do you tell your friends a tiny girl punched you out of the ring and nearly ruined your nose for good? You lose credit. He doesn't like people, and even he knows that.

He watches her with the other classmates, while she acts like she couldn't hurt someone so easily. Or is it an act? She's genuinely happy to be around them, despite never taking off her hat. The nauseous feeling is even stronger now. He still doesn't know why. He doesn't want to approach her until he can understand.

He doesn't seem to have much of a choice however. He keeps noticing her in places. She usually doesn't notice him. When she does, she only stares. And stares. He pretends it doesn't bother him, her downtrodden face, like there's something else that should have happened.

When he has no choice but to confront her, the word why gets stuck in his throat. She only smiles sadly, as though she can hear it.

"I exist to protect you Akihiro."

He doesn't like the way she says his name. He tells her so.

She laughs. "That's the least of your worries."

What are the real ones?

* * *

He wants to glare at every person. He knows better. He checks out more books from the library, more books to bury his nose in and try and comprehend what is clearly incomprehensible. She is almost entirely human at first, almost. But sometimes she walks with a weight on her back, and others her skin is too dark bronze in the sun. And sometimes her eyes are red as that bully's face was when she had finished with him. Sometimes she floats.

Sometimes the red eyes look at him. And they soften and fill with love.

It's the first time he has ever thought of love as a bad thing.

* * *

When they meet again, for a project, she is so normal, so objectively so, he can almost forget. He can forget who and what she is (Even though he really has no idea) just long enough that none of the fear from the older kids concerns him. She occasionally peers to look at what he's doing, but no further.

But when she skips home, he realizes he has never heard her name.

"I'm whatever you want to call me," she says when he asks.

That's not good enough, is it?


	3. 3

"Natsu," he says, like a question.

Her eyes brighten too much. "Is that my name now?"

 _Now_ , she says. She has another one, she has a real one. But she wants him to give her a name. She makes him think of unbearable heat and unforgiving storms. She makes him think of long walks and beach trips and the wind rolling sweat down his back.

"Do you like it?" he says instead. Akihiro feels like the boy who has seen his first crush smile and wants to pull pigtails. But that's something he's too afraid to do.

The urge falls away when he sees the real smile, so open and earnest. "I love it."

That shouldn't make him as happy as it does.

* * *

She has a mother.

She's tall, imposing, dark bronze. Her hands are calloused and gentle in his hair, almost the opposite of his own mother. She offers him cookies and tells him her name, but the language is so unfamiliar that he can't pronounce it more than once every three times.

When he asks him her daughter's name, she laughs sadly. "She doesn't like to think about it. Her father gave it to her."

He doesn't press, much as he wants to.

Still, Nat-chan, a nickname of a nickname, answers him anyway. It's probably because his eyes beg. "Dad wanted me for a purpose," she says. "And I don't think I can do it. I probably can't."

"You can break people's noses," he says. "And you listen to me. Maybe together, we can do it."

She smiles at his heroic words, and shakes her head so fondly. Like she's somehow older than him.

"I don't want to have to do it," Natsu says. "That's why I came to find you."

"For what," Akihiro asks her, not knowing the future.

Natsu plucks a flower from the grass. "To save the world or something, probably. Or to destroy it. That's the kind of monster I am. It depends on you which I do."

 _(As an adult, Akihiro realizes this was the turning point for them. This was where he made his moral choice, and she thought of whether she would follow him or not.)_


	4. 4

The bullies always avoid him now.

Not that he can blame them. He'd avoid someone if they had a girl for a friend who could kick them around without even trying.

Nat-chan still doesn't understand the gravity of what she had done. And even when explaining to her, he wonders if she had really done something wrong. That thought scares him.

"I love you," she keeps saying, as if the desperation will be enough,as if the sincerity is enough. He wants it to be, but the question of why still sparkles in his mind like a niggling seed grasping sunlight for the first time and it hurts.

But he can't ask why, that's just hurting her. He never thought that it would matter to him but it does.

…

On warmer summer days, as the month's vacation rolls on, Nat-chan gets quieter. She remains curled in the sunny spots indoors and doesn't always look up when he calls. Instead she stays in a ball, trembles sometimes.

On those days, he pets the fringe of her hair. And when he is brave enough to pull off her hat, well…

The little green wings flutter, all innocence and sweet cuteness and abnormality.

For the second time since they've met, Akihiro flees from her.

It's not very far, but it's far enough that he can't hear her cry.


	5. 5

It's summer vacation when they talk again.

Her mother invites him over for dinner and he can't refuse because she's invited _his_ mother and now he's sure she isn't human. Nat-chan is quiet, but polite, to his mother. She answers questions with a fair amount of detail and is very embarrassed on all of the praise. Akihiro feels sick to his stomach and he tries not to cringe at the gentle touch of her mother's hand on his shoulder. She doesn't say anything, but she seems merely serene, rather than angered at a sleight on her daughter.

"You should cut it off now if you're going to," she tells him.

Akihiro balks. He doesn't want that. He can't!

Right?

As he goes home, he ponders the words. He thinks he feels Nat-chan's eyes watching him from the window.

* * *

As it happens, they make up slowly.

He asks to see her wings. She hesitates, but he knows they're there now, and he knows that means she's probably not human but he had proof of that a long, long time ago. He is still scared, and he knows that. That means her parents aren't human either, but she isn't _really_ causing any harm, is she? She just protected him. She went too far, of course, but he could teach her. He could fix that, right?

She doesn't care that she's doing wrong, but they can fix that. He touches her wings and it's like he gave her a nice back massage. She relaxes so readily and his heart warms a touch.

He's okay with them making a few more mistakes like this. Friendship isn't a science. Even he knows that. But it will be good. She's his only friend, so it has to be.


	6. 6

Of course, it all goes wrong. That's his life. It _has_ to go wrong.

She's all jittery again, forgets to answer his questions. They're shopping for new pencil cases and he wants to show her what the human stars look like, because apparently she comes from another world and the constellations are different there, so they need to get a telescope. She almost drops the bag a couple of times and only the idea of burdening him with the heavy items makes her not hand them over. He's not that scrawny, really. For some reason, he thinks her hands should be free.

There's someone following them, he realizes when they stop for lunch. The realization is slow and he curses his lack of awareness. He likes science. Scientists observe, they're aware and yet someone is following them, two little kids.

And it makes his Nat-chan jittery.

(His, he thinks back, his, why is he possessing her like this?)

She takes him down side paths and ignores the protests because adults don't stalk children without a very wrong reason. He doesn't like this; it makes him sick.

He looks at her eyes and they are amber-cold.

"I'll protect you," she says, and though the eyes are cold, they are also resigned and scared.

Akihiro hates whoever it is that is making her wear that face.

Unfortunately, he still believes her.


	7. 7

They're safe for a while, but Nat-chan doesn't show up to school the following Wednesday. Or the next. For days and days. He walks home by himself and it's so lonely, too quiet and he realizes in the back of his mind that he's never felt this way before.

"Hello there."

The voice that stops him sounds like oil and weighs like his mother's old textbooks. A man with green hair is blocking his way. His eyes are darting about the streets. "She's not out here," he says, voice lightning crackles and hailstones.

"Who?" Akihiro can't play dumb and he knows it. He's never been good at being _stupid._ He knows, though. Somehow his stomach curdles and tells him.

"My daughter." He says the words the same way Akihiro thinks his father would have said 'my wife'. There's fondness, exasperation, uncertainty. There's also an awful sort of detachment, cruelty for the sake of progress.

He's clinical.

 _(In the future, he knows this well.)_

"Who?" Akihiro repeats anyway, like a cartoon owl.

The darting eyes rest on him, and they are rings of red and blue and green and oh-so-cold. "Don't fit the stereotype, little _human child,_ " he says and he thinks that the older man would sneer if it wasn't beneath him. "I have no reason to kill you yet. I can still change my mind. Where is Rhythm?"

"What will you do if I tell you?" Akihiro cranes his neck to lock eyes with the man, realizing that Nat-chan has a very good reason not to like her name. He feels small in regards to him, nearly insignificant.

The man smiles, rows and rows of sharp teeth like monsters under the bed and impossible in that mouth. "Take her home where she belongs."

Something rotten runs down Akihiro's spine.


	8. 8

"You're going to take her away from me?"

Not now, not when they're finally doing right, not when he has stopped caring that she scares him and they're getting along, this jerk can't take Nat-chan away _now_. He doesn't want that.

The man scoffs again. "She is not _yours_ to be taken. She is _my_ little girl, and you humans do not deserve her. Humans never have deserved Digimon and never will."

"That's xenophobia," he blurts before he can stop himself. He doesn't even understand what the man _means_. What are Digimon? What is he going on about? Does it even matter?

"It is reality," Nat's father counters in this prim, mocking voice. "Now where is she?"

Akihiro opens his mouth to say the truth, to admit that he has no idea and wouldn't tell him if he did, but then he sees her, standing only meters away.

She is smiling one of those heartbreak smiles.

Then the man has a golden… scale, of all things, the scale of a lizard (dragon, his traumatized mind tells him, that is a dragon scale), sticking out of his ribcage.

* * *

The man doesn't fall. He merely turns.

"Daughter,' he says. "Rhythm." So much love in that voice, it's much more than his. That's her name, and he loves saying it.

Nat-chan shakes her head, so tired. "No," she says. "You don't get to call me that." Her small fists clench and she crouches, jumping to land in front of Akihiro with her fists up. "You didn't make me to love me; you don't get to call me that."

"That doesn't change that I love you." He almost seems to be pleading now.

"Loving me doesn't make you _right_."

The man chuckles sadly. He pulls the scale away, tosses it aside. The blood trickles down in a thin line. "And you think that boy is right for you."

Nat tenses in front of him, and Akihiro looks at her with concern. She turns to smile at him-

And the man lunges. He has -gently, Akihiro thinks bitterly years later, gentler than probably necessary- pushes the girl aside, and picks him up with one hand coiled around his throat. Akihiro kicks out reflexively and his lungs scream. As he's lifted higher, the man changes, skin turning purple, vines and armor sprouting from nowhere. The smile on the man's face is rage-filled and chilly.

"Look at how he squirms," the monster-man says, sneering outright through the visor over his eyes. "Pathetic, isn't it?"

Nat leaps and her bronze fingers spark gold and force the man to drop his target. "Algomon," she snaps and the word is loud in the silent, empty street.

Akihiro can hear windows opening through the loud rattles in his chest.


	9. 9

"Do you trust me, Aki?"

The air around them had grown dark and thick. Windows were shutting even faster than they had opened. Akihiro, having coughed air back into his lungs, looks at her with watering eyes.

"T-Trust you?" he repeats. She nods, like she hasn't asked him both the most absurd and the world. "Yes… I think so." She's never lied to him. She's never said the whole truth, but she's never lied and that's enough. She just wants to keep them safe, right?

Nat nods and the vanishing smile scares him for a moment. Then she takes his free hand. "Don't worry," she says. "No matter what happens, I'll protect you from him."

Her father laughs and the sound is bitter. "Your mother has softened you."

"You would have too," Rhythm says, and then, the air thrums. With the thrums came a rush from under his skin, beneath his heart, somewhere he's never reached for in his life. A soul.

He's a boy of science. Humans don't have souls, or at least they shouldn't. There's no proof. And as his own rushes from within him, Akihiro knows science is wrong. Nat can see his soul. Nat is feeding from his soul. Her body glows with it, a color he doesn't know from the colored pencil box wrapping around her and flooding them with light. The monster man laughs and moves towards them. A gold color covers his eyes, brighter and colder at the same time as it engulfs Akihiro himself in soft, gentle warmth.

When it fades, there is no Nat-chan. There is only a great, golden dragon covering him from projectiles with her hand-claws.

Akihiro screams. It's bigger than him, almost the size of six grizzly bears and its eight red eyes are fixed on him so intently.

"Aki?" it says, female voice a rumble of dismay.

He stops. Nat-chan. This _is_ Nat-chan.

Her father laughs. "I told you, Rhythm, I told you what humans are. Let's spare you a little agony."

Vines erupt from the ground and the dragon, his best friend, curls around him and she's almost sharp. He shies away, but she's just far enough that he can still breathe.

"Don't worry, Aki," she says softly. "You'll be okay."

The road craters and light and earth rush each other.

Akihiro sees none of it after that moment. The second there's a big enough gap, he turns tail and runs away. When his mother sees the finger marks on his neck, she takes him to the hospital. Akihiro says nothing. He doesn't speak for a week.

Nat-chan never shows up again, and her small apartment is wiped clean.

He has never hated himself more.

 _(But he will.)_


	10. 10

He hates Digimon, he thinks. Now that he knows the word, he hates them.

No, he doesn't. Not really. He hates _big_ Digimon. He hates imposing ones, ones that shove their world view on you without asking if you really cared. He hates _bully_ Digimon.

Nat-chan was kind of like that. Except she backed off, all of the time. She backed off every time he looked uncomfortable and never pressed and he wishes she had a little more. He wished she had come to him when he made her cry because then they would have been stronger together. As it was, he had made her weak.

He hates himself.

He needs to find her again, no matter what.

* * *

Daimon Suguru is naive.

He thinks if you just punch something enough and they punch you back that's enough to have an understanding. He doesn't understand the true nature of some creatures. Nor does he understand their longing or love.

Akihiro does. He knows much better than Suguru. That's why he's on this journey. He's going to find her, his Nat-chan.

He's going to say he's sorry.

He doesn't know what else will happen. But maybe, if they just try again, they'll have a better future.

 _(He knows in his last moments that he's wrong, very wrong.)_

* * *

 ** _A/N:_** so this could have gone on another ten chapters. And it almost did. But that would have dragged onthrough what we already can guess. Probably. So if you want to take a guess, please do! And please look at Onixflame the Blue's ZH series as well as _Spreading of the Roots_ , my upcoming Savers AU. For more Rhythm, please look outfor _Something Like a Best Friend_. Thanks so much!


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